Research into short film posters

Many short films tend to have multiple posters for two main reasons; creating hype and merchandising. Having more than one poster allows a creator to release them gradually in the run up to the film, this keeps the film fresh in the minds of the audience and therefore creates hype for the film, increasing the audience. More posters means more opportunities to sell those posters as merchandise for the film, of there is more that one style of poster this means that more people are likely to like at least one of the posters and therefore buy it increasing sales and profits. This can be seen in many short films for example, The Fleeting Little Life of Peter Wright (Tim Hautekiet and Sammy Paul, 2015).

The Fleeting Little Life of Peter Wright had two poster designs, as seen above. The posters shared some similarities that tied them together such as they were both portrait and both featured the same logo and text at the bottom. Both images on the posters were from the film yet they were different enough from each other to set them apart. The first features the backs of the characters with a skyline of London and a blue sky with some clouds. This doesn't give away much about the film but the way that the female character is looking at Peter suggests something isn't right, this causes intrigue. The second poster features a potato smiley face that has a chunk out of it with ketchup representing blood making the smiley face look injured, with connotations of the smiley faces brains being blown out, hinting at the films themes of suicide. These posters are effective at both causing intrigue for the film as they do not give too much away, or if you've already seen the film telling the story in a single image.

 

The three posters for Stray Dog (Bertie Gilbert, 2013) vary in orientation. Two are landscape whilst one is portrait. The portrait poster features very little showing only a shadowy figure wearing a wolf mask, the title of the film and the information about who made it. The first landscape poster is somewhat different to most posters as the text orientation does not match that of the poster. The text contains the same information as the first poster and the image of the main character Bertie gives a bit more information than the last as it reveals the main character. The third and final poster features one large film still with five smaller film stills underneath. The title of the film and the director are over the larger still whilst the rest of the information is on a black bar at the bottom of the poster.

Growth (Elliot Gough, 2013) has two posters which are identical apart from orientation. They feature a still of the main character walking down a path towards the camera out of focus with the text laid over it. The title of the film is in a different font to the rest of the information to make it stand out as important